Intro to LinkedIn: Make Your Profile Shine & Connect with Confidence

Curious about what makes a LinkedIn profile truly pop? In this month’s Social Savvy with Kristy, we’re diving into the essentials of crafting a LinkedIn presence that stands out, engages, and sets the stage for meaningful connections.

From the perfect profile picture and headline that tells your story, to writing content that resonates in your industry, Kristy guides you step-by-step through creating a profile that’s not just impressive but impactful. Plus, we’re going beyond the basics to share pro tips on commenting, direct messaging, and strategic engagement—learn how to kickstart conversations, join discussions, and strengthen your presence in the LinkedIn community.

Whether you're new to LinkedIn or ready to refresh your profile, Kristy’s practical advice, humor, and real-life examples make this episode as fun as it is informative. By the end, you’ll have all you need to turn your LinkedIn profile into a networking powerhouse.

Grab a pen, jot down some notes, and get ready to transform LinkedIn into your ultimate professional highlight reel! Tune in, connect, and grow with us!

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Chapters

• 0:00 True Confessions of a Podcaster
• 2:38 LinkedIn is Scary
• 4:45 Creating a Profile Photo
• 6:02 Rate My Face
• 8:17 Creating a Header Image
• 9:56 Writing a Headline
• 11:23 Using the Featured Section
• 12:48 Reworking the About Section
• 16:37 Customize your URL
• 16:56 Verify your Account
• 18:27 Add Skills/Licenses
• 19:10 Add Education/Experience
• 19:52 Projects
• 20:55 Leave a Voice Memo
• 21:53 Ring the Bell to Subscribe
• 22:43 Job Notifications/Campaigns
• 23:05 Away Messages
• 23:30 How to Create Posts
• 28:26 Responding to Comments/DMs
• 30:01 Commenting on Posts
• 31:30 It's Not That Deep

Transcript

welcome back to another episode of the free dive podcast I am of course your host Kristy Billingslea um we're starting off this episode today with some True Confessions of a podcaster uh so this episode I've already recorded once and um more just we're just going to go down on confession Rabbit Hole here um I recorded this episode and like many of the episodes that I record that I try to do I listen to it in my car on my drive because I liked to check the audio quality before I give it to the world and I became super like unhappy with the audio quality because I was talking too fast and like super breathy and um the impostor syndrome in me just could not I tried editing it and I was just like even if I edit out all the breathiness then it's still going to I'm just I'm still talking like 10 miles a minute and that's a little bit who I am as a person and it was a little bit like why is she going through this material so freaking fast so um yeah it was kind of like chill chill lady chill I'm trying to keep up and I can't um you need to relax I have not been relaxed a day in my life like that's just not who I am don't know how to relax I don't do it I don't I think part of me doesn't believe in it so I think it was more of like time to slow down um I became very self-conscious and aware of how much I breathe um didn't love that so as you listen to this please ignore how much I breathe now I'm like losing my air anyway uh this podcast Journey really makes you take a look in the mirror at yourself if you cannot take uh criticism and you can walk away from this not hating yourself thumbs up so we're re-recording um I don't look as cute as I did uh the first time but uh if that's why you're here that's not why you're that shouldn't be why you're here if that is why you're here sorry to disappoint you uh things just happen so on with the show and hopefully I can do it just as well if not better the second time around so now that you know all of my insecurities we are going to move forward with the episode 

today we are doing the much awaited for and requested episode on LinkedIn there I go with my breathing again so I had put up a poll I have been asking what do you guys want to hear about the next time around for social Savvy and 100% of people said we want LinkedIn we don't know how to use LinkedIn uh it's foreign it's scary uh we don't know how to set up our profile we don't know how to interact on it everyone wanted LinkedIn so here I am uh with all of the LinkedIn strategy for you um I tried requested for an actual LinkedIn professional to come be on the podcast and give you the inside scoop for realsies but I was ghosted so instead I went to a LinkedIn training for you and in addition to that did tons and tons of and tons and tons and tons of research um and workshopping and I have brought you all of my notes on that so we can do a little bit of a intro to LinkedIn together um so we're just going to kind of go into the basics and we can set you up a LinkedIn profile uh the best way that we know how so if you are driving and uh un or unable to watch the video version of this you may want to to listen watch again and watch the video version because unfortunately uh I'm going to have to put up some visuals on the screen so that you know what I'm talking about and you may like to take notes or if you want to listen to this over and over and over again that would be great for my engagement and I'm not going to argue about it so you do you boo all right so we're just going to start from the beginning work our way through and I'm gonna talk slower this time okie dokie all right so I'm going to keep my LinkedIn page here up while I go through this so that I don't get lost okay 

so let's start with our profile pictures nice and easy um and in telling you about this I also am going to tell you a funny story so strap in so your profile picture needs to be closeup um looking at the camera and smiling seems pretty straightforward and obvious uh you so this makes it personal right we want this photo to be up to dat and you need to be dressed appropriately we don't want to over accessorize and another one that seems pretty obvious isn't obvious to everybody you don't want alcohol in your image ever so sometimes you're at an event and you're holding some alcohol um don't use that as your image okay um so thinking about this social photos do not cross promote not usually so think the image that you might use for your Facebook profile picture or your Instagram profile picture it's not necessarily the same one you're going to want to use for your LinkedIn profile picture needs to be professional um needs to have these other um specific specifications for it if you're not sure if the photo that you've picked Works um you can ask people you know or story time you can use um a tool I look in looking for tools I found this quote unquote tool called photofeeler.com uh I'm just going to stop right there and tell you I I am not encouraging you to use this tool in searching for a tool that I could recommend to you I found this um does anyone anyone my age uh Millennials in the room uh back in early 2000s we thought it was a good idea we used to some of us uh go on the internet and go to a website called rapy face rap myf face.com anybody else so we would put up pictures of our face on the internet and ask strangers on the internet to rate our face zero to 10 and we all like we always kind of like played it cool just being like yeah just like you can rate me a zero I don't care and we always secretly we just like wanted people to vote us tens and like it gave you like the top people that were voted like the hottest on the the internet why did we do this guys I don't know it's the early days of the internet and we just didn't think we just didn't think we didn't think I mean now we often don't think how we use the internet but that's how we were using the internet back then photofeeler.com similar Vibe and I tested it out for you just to see what would happen um and I felt very much like I was using ryf face.com and unfortunately in testing it out for you I could not figure out how to take my photo down I was like okay this is a a mistake immediately I thought it was going to be like an AI processor would run my picture through and be like oh it rates like this based on these no no no it was like great thanks for your photo we're going to keep it P will be rating it over the next week I'm like oh if I knew that but if that's your thing you can do that uh no idea how secure and safe this website is and don't come to me if you start getting um any kind of viruses on your computer just know that that exists you heard it here uh unless you didn't 

moving on to your background header photo so this is a place um to advertise Market more information um and there's a few different things that you could do here so it's more branding for you as a person you as your business um I've seen this done several different ways so for me personally in the past I've used this um to you know put like a drone photo that's my brand um right now I have it promoting my podcast free dive podcast listen now on your favorite streaming platform and it has my logo um another one that I was just looking at um of this lady just like has her tagline Unleash Your Legacy uh her website's like really small at the bottom it says that she's a coach whatever so C points I'm still figuring out exactly what I want to do with it it's just kind of branded but if we like want to put like a tagline or something on it but you can get kind of you can have fun with this a little bit um you should have one there are certain specifications sizing wise that you need and it's really fussy how to set it up I wish I had written down the specifications and I didn't I didn't do that last time and I didn't do it this time um but anyway maybe I can put it on the screen here and um yeah make sure you make it the right size so it fits and it doesn't look funny and your profile picture doesn't doesn't block any important copy on the image got it 

okay now moving on to more important things your headline so your headline is what appears underneath your name and a lot of times people just use this as whatever their um you know job title is we're not doing that we're going to get a little bit more creative with it instead of your job title we want it to be about who you help and how do you help them so for me uh I used to just have it as that I am a multimedia coordinator or it might have just said I was a licensed drone pilot I have reworked it now it says helping Brands look their best with matterport and Multimedia Magic licensed drone pilot podcast producer so it's giving more um uh who do I help and how do I help them I now know you now know who I'm helping um and also how I'm helping them I'm helping Brands look their best um on C points digital marketing that delivers fueling growth for financial institutions Insurance e-commerce and real estate so you know who we help and you know how we do it um so you are limited in character use so you may want to use if you're if you're running over or you're not sure uh the tip I'm always going to be forever giving you use Chat GPT to help you get within your character limit and um spruce up that little section 

okay so now going down to the featured section you might not even know that this exists um what this is and how you use it is basically think about how you use pinned posts on Instagram um Tik Tok uh posts that you have put on LinkedIn that you want to basically highlight so um this could be posts this could be things that you want to link um so this is just a place to highlight content that is important to you important to your brand um so the purpose of this is to just add value and create helpful resources you can as an option something that I was taught in my um thing that I went to words are escaping me um is uh Viva Von rosson she's the person that I went to um her training that's the word I wanted training that I went to on hers basically what she has done to make it look like a cool little Banner is three images and then she put links in there um to link different resources our es so you can kind of get a little bit creative with it um use it use it to highlight things that are important to you in your brand and your company got it 

all right now the big one your about section so this is commonly confused with a section that is a resume this is not your resume LinkedIn is not your resume it is a resource when people find you this is a resource to learn more about you learn more about your company learn more about your brand okay so we're not going to list it out the way that you would on a resume that's what your resume is for um so you're going to use this section to tell a captivating story about you about your brand about your company um so we're going to write it like a story we're trying to use it to attract a new audience so what I have done with mine mine used to be written very much in a resume fashion here are all the different skills that I have and when I got them and why I'm amazing at them scratching that um it's written very much more of Storytelling now used a bold um statement to start it uh mine starts with you might catch me with my head in the clouds literally you know that referring to being a pilot draws you into my story uh there's something exhilarating about being up there catching catch capturing the world from a different perspective as a multimedia coordinator I'm obsessed with turning Creative Visions into reality and I find joy in every moment of the journey then I go into why I have love for video creation and photography um why I have a passion for what I do how I fell into matterport um I'm a pilot and why I love it and I have this new passion for podcasting years of customer relations and why that's important to what I do now and then I end with with a call to action if you're ready to elevate your multimedia projects and marketing in Endeavors let's connect I'd love to bring your vision to life you can find me on Twitter so it just kind of it groups in all the things that about me things I do puts it into a story tells you how to find me how to connect with me so it creates this more interesting version of who Kristy is rather than just like here's a list of my skills because that goes in the skills section so now we're going to about section for cpoint similar thing because this is a company um we started out with a question is your marketing delivering the results you need to stand out and grow at cpoint digital we fuel success for financial institutions insurance agencies real estate firms and e-commerce brands with cuttingedge digital marketing strategies from SEO and marketing automation to campaign planning and strategy development we provide the solutions you need to thrive and then we kind of go into a little bit of the history of our company with with uh being the first in New England to do matterport we have a drone pilot we're a HubSpot partner tune into our podcast ready to transform your digital presence let's connect today start with something uh bold or a statement or question end with call to action all right storytelling um um all right that seems it's it's simpler than you think if you need help let me know uh okay so now I'm going to give you a list of to-dos and these are things that you can you can do and things you must do all right to make your profile look its best so we're going to start with the things that you you need to do must first prepare yourself am I going too fast I'm very very aware of it I'm very aware of my breathing 

first thing to do customize your url if you if your current URL is anything but linkedin.com your name you got to you need to edit it it's not difficult you go into your settings and you just switch it to what you want it to be your name your company it's not hard uh you need to verify your account as an individual Kristy Billingslea I was able to do this with ease as of right now we are in November of 2024 depending on when you are watching or listening to this episode it is currently free to do that to verify so do it now while you can before they're on to us and they start charging us do it now um now at the same time when I went to go verify Seapoint they were like weird about it it was like okay thanks for your request to verify we'll get back to you and that it's been forever and they haven't gotten back to me so I don't know what the hangup is I didn't have to submit in my memory I didn't have to submit anything like when I have tried to verify US on Instagram and Tik Tok and stuff in the past you have to submit all this all this crap like like here give us proof of your company's business ID and like send us like proof of your mail like it's it's complicated LinkedIn didn't make me do that they were like just request it but then for the company page they have not done it for me yet I don't know why but my point is do it ask for it especially just as an an individual do it on your personal page um for when I did it for me it just went through right away I didn't have any kind of fuss about it so that's on your to-do list now we're going to go to your skills and licenses or certificates so this is easy when you're adding your top skills it's almost just like typing in a whole bunch of it's like the way you type in um keywords you're just keyboarding all your skills like digital marketing social media marketing um drone piloting matterport video production like you're just like typing them all in so that they appear um I don't really know if there's a limit or not but um and then same with licenses and certifications so um like when I got my pilot's license I put that on there HubSpot certifications for instance put that on there whatever it is um your education and experience so again think of this not as a resume in as a resume in the sense that when you write your resume you don't need to write that you worked at an ice cream parlor when you were 16 that's not pertinent to what you are doing now in your career unless it is unless you are somehow working at that ice cream parlor has something to do with whatever you're doing now but leave all of those things out and put on uh your experience um the things that currently pertain to your career um and get them in there that's everything that you must do all right now we're going to go into things that are optional um projects so projects could be I feel like it's like kind of anything like um I put in my I did a triathlon in 2015 I put that in there and it's just this is like your bragging section cool things that I've done for the community if you have volunteered um so you know in here I get to brag about how I was a triathlete for one second um it supported breast cancer um and I get to kind of rather than brag about me brag about you know this amazing Triathlon that has been supporting um breast cancer survivors for however many years um but if you have done any kind of special um training that's not really that wouldn't really go in the licensing section or you have volunteered somewhere or whatever that would go in that section that's just like a you can do that if you want optional okay leaving a 10-second voice memo you can only do this on mobile so you would need to get the mobile app and record it on your phone um the point of this is really so that people can hear your voice it's more of a personalization identification um it pops up kind of next to where your name is verified I haven't done this for mine yet I don't know what to say still I've been listening to a lot of I I don't see it on a lot of LinkedIn accounts and so when I do I think oh this person knows what they're doing like they are LinkedIn Savvy and I think that's another advantage of doing it so it's just kind of like here's who I am here's what I help it's kind of similar to the um to the headline um but it's a way that you get to hear her voice so again something that you can do if you want don't have to uh ring the bell message to encourage subscribers so on your page you have a bell you can subscribe on LinkedIn um that was something new to me that I learned when I was doing all this research I didn't I have was like oh I don't know why people would subscribe to my content but they they can and they should especially for your company pages so viva's suggestion was to create this sort of ring the bell um statement you can even put it in your header Banner um to kind of point because it's right beneath it like ring our Bell um to encourage people to subscribe you could word it another way if you wanted like just subscribe and you whatever um encourage people to subscribe is the point um so that they see your content first subscribe to other people's content you get that exchange back and forth turn on job notifications so this would go both ways if your company is hiring um if you are looking for work um this is this is just a great way to kind of get yourself out there either way activate campaigns um again just an an option for you as a company turn on away messages you can only do this with premium so it just kind of depends on what kind of DM you are um and you know messages kind of kind of flooding in all the time if you don't like leaving people hanging and you want to kick back to the aim days aim AOL whatever you can have an away message all right so that's the end of our to-do list so now we're going to go into how to um engage so both creating your own posts and um engaging on other people's posts so first we're going to talk about writing our own posts our own content um and we're going to kind of think back for a second if you listened to I think it was last month's social Savvy episode if you haven't I recommend it because it was it was a lot about this how to write content for uh the specific tone of each social platform but the highlights on that for LinkedIn are your um your content for LinkedIn the tone of it want you want to be professional it's insightful and it's conversational you're provoking people to have conversation with you in these posts so here's what you want to focus on you want to focus on your brand and buyer Persona that is true both of when you're writing for your company or you are writing for yourself as an individual create cont content that builds Authority and position yourself as a go-to expert clarify uh the need the pain points and needs um of your audience uh so again you are writing um content that is helpful to your audience I'm just kind of reiterating what I already said and um you are the expert in your um in your your field so what are the things that people are struggling with why do you want them to keep coming back to you for that information doesn't have to be a Blog in each post um now the posts that do the best on LinkedIn uh statistically are a Employee Appreciation and acknowledgement so um just whatever that means to you thought leadership type of post um I was thinking that I saw I I'm working on getting better myself at at um engaging more on my LinkedIn um this has just been like an ongoing learning curve for myself as well now that I have this knowledge education like I can get better at it so I'm hoping that that will be true for you if you're struggling but I saw I think it was last week or week before um my one of my co-workers uh analine you know analy one of my co-workers analy you should know her um posted on LinkedIn um about what we did for bill for boss's day and I thought that her post was so perfect because she was just highlighting this like silly thing that we did for Bill but at the same time she took it as an opportunity to show the importance of um celebrating Bill why having fun on that day was so important like she just she worded it so beautifully and I was just like oh man she nailed that and I just reposted it um things like that do the best because people the the audience on LinkedIn that's the kind of stuff like they want to celebrate other people um it's very insightful while remaining professional and it creates conversation so perfect um you can share industry knowledge which again is similar going back to positioning yourself on um having Authority and um here's one that you want to proceed cautiously with you can create posts with an educated opinionated topic so I mean you think about it people love sharing their opinion they love it and even more uh people love controversy people love poking in to the internet any social platform and giving an alternate view um and disagreeing with the people on the internet so now LinkedIn this is a more professional platform this is not where um people come to get feisty generally and I don't recommend starting fights but um it is because it's a good place for conversation this is a good place to um you know drop your opinion on a matter in your industry ask what other people think um use polls provoke people with a question get the conversation started so if you're not sure what to post about that would be a great way to get a conversation going get a short post out there especially with polls all right was that okay did it make sense did it move too fast we got it okay we're almost done basically so now we're going to go into responding to comments and DMS and responding on other people's posts cuz this feels like it's one of the hardest things for everybody this was the feedback I was getting and it was for me too I'm working on getting better at this we can do it together so responding to comments and DMS simple rule do it authentically respond to all of them that feels daunting you can do it uh you create LinkedIn relationships this way um especially when it comes to DMs I feel like you can tell my personal role for myself I can tell when things are just spammy and I'm not going to respond to those ones I don't I just don't have time for your spam sales pitch it's just especially when that's not authentic to me but when people drop you congrats on your work anniversary things I saw your post and it feels like it's not a bot and it's real those ones I will respond to um but especially especially when people comment on your posts you need to respond back to all of them um and just and just respond like yourself it doesn't need to be this stiff um you know how do I respond like a professional person you know stuffy just respond like yourself you know you keep it professional but be yourself um even just thank people thank you for commenting like whatever um and on others posts in your feed add value you don't be afraid to share a different point of view going back to people love sharing their opinions people love to argue um people like a different point of view um and it creates engagement for them be genuine offer congratulations encourage a further discussion so again um offering um an additional thought even if it's not a different thought furthering that discussion it gets them more engaged agement um I it's kind of funny I I create for I've been creating for myself The more I've been doing this what I have just kind of thought of for myself as new LinkedIn friends and The more I've done this the more they've been commenting on my posts The more I've been commenting more on their posts and it's like I now have a lot more back and forth with certain people because we have we're now like voling back and forth with each other um and I can now rely on those people to be liking all of my posts and same with them I I like way more of their posts now so you start building up this um audience of in in my case strangers on the internet that are like my LinkedIn friends so anyway um it works if fallouts fails ask questions um people appreciate engagement 

so um these hopefully are foolproof foolproof methods for you don't be scared I guess is how I would end that it's not that deep it's not that deep it's just LinkedIn guys um you can do it I do think it's important to exist there I do think it's important to engage there um certainly if you are a business and and a brand but if you exist in the business realm having a profile for yourself as an individual also important um people want to come find you and that feels creepy but it's true um and um I think most companies expect their employees to be on LinkedIn in some capacity so um now that you have all of this and these to-dos to-do uh hopefully it's enough that you feel like you can get in there and um spruce up your profile a little bit and uh feel a little bit better about it it's not that scary um this is just a little bit of an intro for you of how to do that I hope that it was helpful um if you do end up adjusting your profile at all please connect with me connect with me anyway um I would love to see the transformation of your profile especially if I can uh uh say it's because of me like I would love to be able to congratulate myself because of this so please let me feel like my efforts are not in vain especially because I've recorded this twice please let me feel like it was not for nothing um what do you guys want to talk about next um I I I uh clearly am willing to go to many links for you uh to help you with your social media problems so I'm here for you thank you so much for being here for me this this podcast W ride has been uh kind of wild so we're having fun we're having a lot of anxiety a lot of imp Foster syndrome and we're getting over it really um we've got some good episodes coming up uh we've had some good I've just had a bunch of fun guests that I've had on I am kind of stalking out people that I want to be guests coming on um if you are a person in the marketing realm listening and you feel like you have some insightful and helpful information for my audience hit me up on LinkedIn and we can talk um so yeah if there's topics and things you guys want to hear about I'm open to it I am here and I am open so I appreciate you being here hope this was helpful uh please leave me comments and all that stuff so I know how to proceed in the future I always want to be better better for you so thank you very much and we'll see you guys next time